Summerhayes – Open – 25th January 2026

Only nine of us fishing today and when Pete announced the draw, I was fourth on the list and well happy when I pulled out 32 which is an absolute bunghole. For company I had Steve Collins and Oscar on either side, Dan ‘Making It Happen’ Taggart was on golden peg 36 while Nick was down on 19.

I set up the usual little 0.1 and 0.2 gram rigs and on the whistle fed groundbait and pinkies on the top four and 13 metre lines before pinging some maggots across to the island. Starting short it took 20 minutes to get my first indication but then I’ve caught some nice roach, an ide, a little tench and some skimmers including one around a pound. I could see Dan netting the odd decent fish and Oscar had landed a couple of nice skimmers while Steve C was catching carp next door.

After 2.5 hours bites slowed up on the short lines so moved out to 13 metres and it was really good with quite a few tench including several around 12oz-1lb, some quality roach and 6-8oz skimbobs. Going into the last half an hour, I went to 14 and then 14.5 metres to keep bites coming and added three more tench, a decent skimmer plus some more roach. I ended up with 37 fish and hadn’t hooked a carp all match, a lovely days fishing.

McKenzie on 11 was first to weigh and had 4lb 14oz of silvers, Rob B had 6lb 8oz, Glynn struggled on 15 for 2lb 5oz and then Nick had some nice silvers for 5lb 11oz on 19. Rog C had 1lb 4oz on 28 and then Oscar weighed 25lb 15oz to go into the overall lead after he’d slowed up on silvers and switched to fishing for carp. My fish went 14lb 6oz and then Steve just pipped Oscar with 27lb 7oz and last to weigh was Dan who had some nice fish including a lovely crucian for 7lb 14oz and second in the silvers.

Oscar switched to fishing for carp and finished second with 25lb 15oz

I had a lovely day to win the silvers with 14lb 6oz of tench, skimmers, roach and ide

Steve had the top weight with 27lb 7oz of carp

Dan T was second in the silvers with 7lb 14oz

1 – Steve Collins (Summerhayes) – 27lb 7oz
2 – Rob Wylde (Summerhayes) – 25lb 15oz

Silvers
1 – Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 14lb 6oz
2 – Dan Taggart (Summerhayes) – 7lb 14oz

I picked up £34 for winning the silvers and had really enjoyed that, especially with the weather not being too bad and not hooking any carp always helps as well!

Generous donations from Nick P (£4), me (£2), Rob Wylde (£1) and a nugget off Dan saw the Nugget-O-Meter climb up to £174.

There’s still a great offer running if you fancy treating yourself to some new fishing gear, use the exclusive discount code AgainstMenandFish10 to get 10% off when you shop online at Somerset Angling

Also I still have copies of my book available from eBay here or Amazon here